


Visiting Hours

by TigerDragon



Series: The Girls In Question [8]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Apologies, Birthday, Canon Compliant, F/F, Prison, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-29 10:49:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/319081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/TigerDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Valley State Prison for Women was not happy fun times."</p><p>"Violence was not a very good birthday celebration--well, except that Faith seemed to like violence quite a bit, really, though maybe that was an even better reason, since she was supposed to be rehabbing."</p><p>Buffy visits Faith in prison. Awkward conversation, unresolved tensions and hilarity ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visiting Hours

**Author's Note:**

> We brought our own subtext, Joss. ;) Don't worry, we'll put them back when we're done.
> 
> Set just after "Into the Woods" (BtVS Season 5) and simultaneous with "Reunion" (Angel Season 2).

Just as Buffy had expected, Valley State Prison for Women was not happy fun times. High walls, barbed wire, mean-faced guards glaring at everyone, tattooed women in jumpsuits looking at her a little too closely, horrible ugly puke-green walls. Prison sucked, which she supposed was a good thing, because all the nasty people she wasn’t allowed to stake should at least have some reason to repent their wrongs.

At the moment, she was mostly annoyed at the gate guard.

“It’s a cake! It even made it through the metal detectors. I promise it doesn’t have any secret escape device baked inside. Or a shank, or shank-able material. It’s just dessert.” She gave the stone-faced military woman her best puppy-dog eyes.

“No food. No exceptions.”

For the eighteenth time that day, the Slayer clamped down on her urge to get violent. Violence was not a very good birthday celebration--well, except that Faith seemed to like violence quite a bit, really, though maybe that was an even better reason, since she was supposed to be rehabbing.

Buffy sighed and abandoned cake. “Oh, fine.”

Once they were done searching her purse (Mr. Pointy safely inside her hollowed-out passenger seat), they led her back to the waiting room. More puke-green and about a dozen other people filled the room with an unpleasant tension.

Okay, so some of that tension was probably hers. She was a big enough girl to admit that.

She could see Faith before Faith could see her, and it was jarring how clean she looked. Calm. Half a smile on her lips, shoulders loose and easy, not checking the sight lines or watching her back. Not scared. Not angry. It hurt, because part of her _was_ still angry. Still wanted to see Faith hurt and scared and suffering. Didn’t want to see her looking calm, fit, and still the same stupid cheekbones and deep brown eyes and lips that looked too good not to be wearing lipstick.

That same part of her was currently working on making sure she felt like shit because Faith didn’t. Or something. When had she gotten to be such a basket-case?

She decided, irrationally, to blame Riley. Or Angel. Or both. Both sounded very satisfying. _Men._

Faith was still sitting at the desk behind the sorta-clean glass partition, next to the old black phone and with her long clever fingers spread on the obscenity-carved institutional wood on her side of the table, and the flat surprise in her eyes and half-drop of her jaw when Buffy pulled out the chair said that Buffy Summers was the last person in the world she expected to be sitting down across from her.  Much less in a powder-blue blouse and navy suit, card in hand.

Her lips moved - soundlessly, maybe, or at least too quiet to hear through a thick pane of glass. It didn’t matter. Buffy would have known that particular motion of Faith’s lips through six inches of lead.

_B._

_Shit_. She knew, _knew_ the smile on her face was goofy-looking, and her little wave pretty silly, but it was her first time visiting her --ex-enemy? Ex-friend? Ex....it’s complicated!-- in prison. First time visiting anyone in prison, so a little awkwardness was to be expected.

She picked up the plastic receiver and tried not to think about the germs.

“Hi.”

Faith cradled the receiver in the palm of her hand, resting it against her face, and visibly tried to regain some of the serenity she’d had on her face before her jaw had tried to fall off. It wasn’t working very well - apparently Buffy was jamming her serenity generator thingy, which was kind of nice because it mean she wasn’t the only one having issues. Complicated issues which did not need to be spoken of in any way, shape or form when birthday wishings were on the table. Definitely not. Nope.

“B,” Faith said  again - this time with audio. Her voice shook, just a little.

“I’m sorry it’s late,” Buffy launched into the explanation of the obvious because hey, easier. “But life’s been pretty crazy lately--like, five kinds of personal drama in addition to Big Bads--so I’m not all together right now. But, Happy Birthday!” She smiled her most cheer-inducing smile and held up the card to the glass. “It has puppies amusingly dressed in hats. I tried to bring a cake but the guard troll wouldn’t let me. I told her it was shiv-free but--”

“You’re here,” Faith interrupted her, blurting the words out like she was afraid they might run off if she waited. “You’re here. Visiting me. In prison. With a card and a cake and a suit.”

Now she sounded like she was describing Martians landing.  Definitely getting into heavy, actually talking about feelings territory. Not good.

“Well, apparently this is all I have that isn’t jeans or Too Sexy For My Cell-Block.”

“Fuck,” Faith said shortly. At Buffy’s expression, she elaborated. “If they think that’s not too sexy for my cell-block, they gotta get somebody new checking. He’s got something wrong with his equipment.”

There went another goofy smile, this time with Added Blushing Action.

_“B,” Faith whispered in her ear, “if you’re gonna wear a dress like that, people are gonna stare. That what you want, good girl?” Fingertips that were safely resting on her hips started getting not-safe very fast. “People staring, I mean. ‘cause you got a lot to stare at....”_

Breathing. Breathing was good. She tried to take herself through one of the new exercises that Giles was teacher her. It only kinda helped. Even in with no make-up and on the other side of inch-thick Plexiglass, Faith still gave her that dark rushing feeling that was related but not identical to the kind she got during a good, satisfying session of slayage.

“You look good, too. It’s weird and unfair but you seem...better.” She smiled, goof-free. “I’m simultaneously angry and happy about that.”

“If it was good enough for Doctor King, guess it’s good enough for me.” Faith managed to smile back, though it was fragile at the edges. Scared, a little. “You still gonna to beat me to death if I apologize, B?”

Buffy flinched like a normal person would under a punch. Her voice was quiet and a little rough when she replied.

“No.” She stared at the prison’s insignia patch on Faith’s uniform. “No death.”

“Just busted up then. Fair, I guess.” Faith took a breath, filling her lungs with air, and Buffy tried very hard to tell herself she wasn’t watching - wasn’t watching the way the jacket shifted over that slender, steel hard body, wasn’t watching the way Faith’s teeth worked her lower lip for a few seconds before the exhale started, wasn’t watching the hint of moisture at the edges of those eyes that had no business being so deep and vivid when they were just stupid brown.

Faith’s lips parted around the exhale. She told herself she wasn’t watching that, either.

“I fucked you over, B.” The words came flat and rough and fast, like Faith was afraid to stop because she might not be able to start again. “You tried to be my friend and you tried...” her breath stopped, her cheeks burned, but she forced past it with the same brutal determination that had kept her getting up long after she ought to have stayed down. “You were good to me, and all I could see was how much you had that I didn’t, and I did things to you that can’t ever be made right. Ever. But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell you I’m sorry. So...” Her shoulders squared, her free hand flat on the table, and Faith looked Buffy in the eyes through the glass with the kind of sincerity you couldn’t buy or fake - the kind you had to earn the hard way. The kind you had to fight for. “So I’m sorry, B. I’m sorry, and I guess I always will be. Thought you should know.”

Pressure behind Buffy’s eyes told her that her stupid glands were betraying her again. Tearing her gaze away from the other Slayer, she stared hard at the party puppies. She liked the beagle. It looked like a good listener.

“Part of me will always be furious,” she told it. It continued to stare out at the viewer with its understanding eyes. See? No judging.

When she could finally swallow around the lump in her throat, she looked up again at Faith and her honest-to-god repentance. “I’ve learned lately that--” Her lips pressed themselves together like they were trying to keep the words in, like even her body didn’t want to hear them. She waited a moment before she could start again. “That if you can’t forgive someone, you lose them,” and then they were out, she’d said them, and they made the next part easier to say than she’d thought it would be. “I don’t know if I’m there yet, Faith. I don’t know what that will take.” The plastic phone creaked in her hand, about to be a casualty of the Chosen’s emotional stress. “I want to. I want to forgive you.”

Faith’s hand came up and pressed to the glass until the fine lines of her palm were stark on skin pale with the pressure, and the whisper in Buffy’s ear was close enough - throaty enough - to remind her of things that made her cheeks burn with heat. “Guess we’re in the same boat then, B,” Faith breathed over her, “because I’d kinda like to forgive myself, too, but fuck if I know how.”

Like it was completely natural, like she did this all the time or like the rift between them had never happened, Buffy laid her hand on the glass over Faith’s.

_\--she watched as her pink, manicured fingers slipped between the other woman’s roughened ones, and somehow that seemed more intimate than the fingers curling and twisting inside her, than Faith’s hot wet tongue on her clit, than the trail of swiftly-fading bites and bruises up and down both their bodies. As the first frissons of orgasm swept over Buffy, she watched her nails dig into the back of her lover’s hand hard enough to draw blood, and still the other Slayer held on,  both their knuckles white with tension.  Buffy’s last thought before everything exploded was that there were no other living hands that could stand up to her crushing grasp. No other hands like hers._

_When she came back into focus again, Faith was laughing and kissing her and there was no air at all in the world. “Jesus, B, but you know how to get a girl worked up. I know I’m sure as hell never gonna look at the horse the same way again. Think we can swing something with the parallel bars, really mix things up?”_

_As it turned out, they could._

Heat surged through her at the memory, lighting up every nerve, making her suddenly aware of how her Sensible Suit hugged her hips and let cool air brush her collarbone. Her sight, hearing and sense of smell (unfortunately--she was really starting to hate Simple Green) went into overdrive, and it was like she’d turned up the contrast and resolution up on life. Her over-achieving brain started to register every detail of Faith’s appearance: hair silky-dark against her pale skin, heat spreading over the sharpness of her cheekbones, lips parted on a subtle gasp, ivory teeth, the half-visible flicker of the tip of her tongue, eyes wide - pupils dialated, gaze searching - and pulse visibly hammering in her throat.

She wondered what Faith was remembering.

“Jesus, B,” Faith husked into the phone, “I thought you weren’t trying to kill me.”

And oh, _God_ , her voice went all they way through Buffy.

It was probably for the best, really, that the phone took that moment to collapse under her Uber-Kung-Fu Grip. After the initial crunch, a horrible crackly noise sputtered out of the wreckage. Every visitor, inmate and guard was staring incredulously at her.

“Uh, wow, that was weird.” Her tone was helpfully stunned. Yup, totally the mysterious breakage of the phone that had her steamrolled. Not Sex-On-Legs who was currently busting up laughing on the other side of the glass over there. Nope. They probably (she half-hoped) weren't going to give her another one, either. Faith grinned and waved. Mouthed _next time._

Buffy gave her a smile and wave of her own before the guards politely but quickly ushered her out of the visitation room. Her cheeks were still doing that annoying burning thing. _Next time._

She sighed as she picked phone bits out of her purse. She really hated her glands.


End file.
